Series

Growing Up in Scotland

Series abstract

The Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) study, which began in 2005, is a large-scale longitudinal social survey which follows the lives of groups of Scotland's children from infancy through to their teens, and aims to provide important new information on young children and their families in Scotland. The study forms a central part of the Scottish Government's strategy for the long-term monitoring and evaluation of its policies for children, with a specific focus on the early years. Unlike other similar cohort studies, this survey has a specifically Scottish focus.

Getting started

How can I find out about the datasets – variables, population, sample size etc.?

You can find links to the datasets in the DATA ACCESS section above. When you follow the link to a dataset you will be taken to its catalogue record which contains the following information:

Download button: this is located near the top right of the catalogue record.

A brief overview of the data: who collected the data, the main topics, the population covered, how the data were collected, the levels of geography and much more.

Documentation:scroll down the catalogue record to find the documentation. All datasets come with documentation supplied by the data producer, normally in the form of searchable pdfs. The documentation varies from survey to survey but will normally include a user guide, the questionnaire and a technical report. These documents should tell you:

how the data were collected and processed into its current format

which topics were covered and the wording of the questions used

how each variable was coded and how derived variables were constructed

the name(s) of the weighting variables, how the weight(s) were constructed and when to use each one if there are more than one

Related studies and Publications using the data: see which surveys are related, and how other researchers have used the data.

Most survey data may be downloaded as SPSS, Stata or tab-delimited files. There is a download button near the top right of each catalogue record. Most datasets can be downloaded after you login to your UK Data Service account. See our Access pages for more information about how to access data.

See our Use data pages for more advice about getting started with analyses. These pages contain advice and training; guides about datasets, topics and methods and software including SPSS and Stata; information about how others have used the data and how to cite datasets. See also our Events pages for courses and webinars about how to find, use and manage data.